Great 10m Opening to South Pacific - 3D2AG, FO5QB, VK4MA

W4LSG 10m DX

I always like to find opportunities to work something unusual.  I like to try to work all bands and modes.  As such, I look for opportunities to make contacts on 10m and 6m whenever they happen to be open.  I've noticed a few openings on these bands lately.  I recently caught a 10m opening with great conditions into South America.  I worked Brazil, Argentina, and Chile several times before the band closed and went back to silence.  A few years ago I made a couple 10m contacts in Europe which stunned be given the lack of sunspot activity.  Given that I have not been an active ham during a peak sunspot time, I think I've made some good contacts on the 6m and 10m.

2020 Georgia QSO Party - W4LSG

I decided on a whim that since the COVID-19 scare came up and we have been staying at home as much as possible that it might be worth trying to get on the air and represent my state during the 2020 Georgia QSO party from my QTH.  I had a few things to do so I knew I would not be able to work the event from start time to end time, but I thought it could be a fun thing to do anyway. 

Testing FT4 and Contact with WA9PIE

When I first started using FT4, I found that it would log inconsistently and made for some manual work to get all of my online logs/QSL services to match.  So I stopped using it.  At some point, Mike Carper (WA9PIE), owner of HRD, sent a newsletter advising that HRD now supported FT4 correctly.  I tested the new version on my system and found that though it did seem to log correctly in HRD and possibly if sent from HRD to LoTW, it did not send correctly to QRZ, eQSL, or HRDLog.net.  I reported my findings via the HamRadioDeluxe user forum where Mike replied and advised they understood the problems.  Not long after, another release of HRD was available that should fix these issues.  I downloaded and installed the new version and did some testing immediately.  It was actually working 100% as expected!  While I was testing, I actually ran across WA9PIE working 20m FT4!  I gave him many calls before he replied, but we did make a QSO and I have him in the log.  Neat contact!

73 de W4LSG sk